Sri Lanka Telecom  sponsored Logos Hope, the world’s largest floating book fair, on its visit to Sri Lanka. With the vision of sharing knowledge, help and hope with the people of the world, the ship carried on board approximately 6000 different titles on a wide variety of subjects including parenting and relationships, leadership, travel, spiritual as well as a profusion of books for children of all ages. Most of these books were obtained from UK and US and were sold at amazingly affordable prices providing valuable knowledge and insight for all. Two book fairs were held in Colombo during March, April and May and other book fairs will be held in Galle between 30^th June and 18^th July 2011 and in Hambanthota from 19^th to 22^nd July 2011.

Logos Hope in partnership with SLT carried out various educational and community projects such as:

Islandwide book donation programmes

A total of ten schools were selected from around the country to be beneficiaries of an islandwide book donation programme including five schools in Anuradhapura, two in Mallavi and three in Colombo and the suburbs. Two teams from SLT and Logos Hope visited the schools to distribute the books and Sri Lanka Army was instrumental in providing assistance in the Anuradhapura and Mallavi districts. During these visits, the group not only distributed books, but also encouraged the teachers and students, opening their eyes to a wider world beyond the shores of Sri Lanka, and also leaving behind a promise of hope for a brighter future. Books amounting to a worth of Rs. 2.5 million were donated via these programmes.

Library Training Workshop

A two and half day library training workshop was organised at SLT Havelock Town Library for the librarians of St. Matthews College, Colombo, Arawwala Vidyaloka Maha Vidyalaya and Depanama Dharmapala Kanishta Vidyalaya and also 6 SLT employees. The SLT employees were trained along with the school librarians to equip them to train the librarians of other schools in the future. The training programme opened the eyes of the audience to the hugely important and wide role played by librarians which has often been overlooked in our culture. It also imparted valuable insights on how to maintain a library that is not only useful but also is attractive and which will draw in the target group of readers to make use of the wealth of knowledge and information the library has to offer. They were also introduced to the systems involved in categorizing and labeling books according to widely accepted world standards, such as the Dewey Decimal Classification / System.

Community Service Programme at St. Matthews College

A team of volunteers from Logos Hope together with a team of employees from SLT visited the St. Matthews College where they joined together with several school staff and mothers of children of St. Matthews College in cleaning out and rearranging the existing library to make optimum use of available facilities and resources as well as helped to sort out and categorize the existing booksSLT will continue to follow up with these schools to ensure the values imparted to them at the library training workshop are carried forward into the future